The Motion Picture Association of America: Natural Born Censors?

Like it or not, the MPAA ratings code discourages artistic freedom, but the worst part is that the system may not even be fair to independents without much clout.

by Jeff Schwager | Published September 8, 1994

According to a recent New Yorker profile, the door to director Oliver Stone's office is decorated with the following legend, courtesy of the Motion Picture Association of America: "Rated R - for extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking issues/09/images, and for strong language and sexuality." Quite a mouthful and, while I haven't seen NBK (as the film is coming to be known) at press time, there's little doubt, given the adult nature of Stone's past work and the film's intentionally controversial subject matter, that the rating is warranted.

It seems less likely, though, that the NC-17 rating slapped on another new film, Kevin Smith's independently produced Clerks, could be justified. For those of you unfamiliar with the NC-17 rating, it's the post-1990 successor to the X-rating, designed to prevent anyone under the age of 17 from seeing an NC­17 film. Originally, the NC-17 rating seemed like a great idea. It was designed to overcome the stigma that was attached to the X-rating, which had become synonymous in the public mind with pornography.

Initially, the X-rating was a legitimate symbol for films that featured adult content, and two of the best films of the late '60s and early '70s – Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris - were released with this rating. But ironically, when the MPAA designed the original ratings system in 1968, it neglected to register the X- rating. That meant that while a film had to be submitted (with a sizable fee) to the MPAA for a G, PG or R (following 1984, PG-13) rating, all distributors were free to advertise their films as "X-rated."

Once the porno industry latched onto the X-rating, many legitimate theaters refused to show X-rated films, and mainstream newspapers began refusing to run their advertisements. With their distribution opportunities severely limited, and with pressure building from religious and political groups, the studios stopped producing X-rated films, effectively censoring filmmakers who wanted to make "adult" (as opposed to pornographic) movies.

Cut to the late '80s: a variety of filmmakers were pushing the envelope of what was considered acceptable to the American public. Angel Heart, directed by Alan Parker, was given an X­rating and Parker was forced to recut the film in order to see it released with an R. But both Peter Greenaway and Pedro Almodovar refused to recut their films (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Tie Me Up! Tie me Down! respectively), and they were released intact by independent distributors, albeit with limited advertising and distribution possibilities.

While filmmakers had long called for a new rating to distinguish serious adult films from pornography, the breakthrough didn't come until 1990, when one of the major studios got into the act.

Woody Harrelson, interviewed by Robert Downey, Jr. in NBK, Oliver Stone's new "satire" on violence.

Universal Pictures was set to distribute Henry and June, a steamy film about the relationship between writers Henry Miller and Anais Nin, when CARA gave the film an X rating. The director, Philip Kaufman, who was responsible for such acclaimed films as The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, stuck to his guns and refused to recut Henry and June. With millions of dollars at stake, and with the opportunity to take a public stand for artistic freedom, Universal pressured the MPAA into creating the NC-17 rating.

The glory, however, was short-lived. Conservative groups quickly protested that the new rating was no different from the old one, and threatened to boycott theaters and studios that showed or produced NC-17 films. The old restrictions quickly fell back into place: since Henry and June, not a single mainstream film has been released with an NC-17 rating.

Some independent distributors got around the problem by releasing controversial films with no rating at all, but now, as the independents are lining up for affiliations with the studios, even that strategy is in danger. Miramax, for example, reneged on its commitment to distribute the Martin Lawrence concert film You So Crazy after it earned an NC-17 rating. Now owned by Disney, Miramax has become an MPAA signatory and can no longer release a film without the organization's stamp of approval.

Back to Natural Born Killers and Clerks. While Clerks will reportedly be distributed intact, NBK - despite the warning of "extreme violence and graphic carnage . . . shocking issues/09/images, and ... strong language and sexuality" - will not. Stone reportedly had to tone down his film in several spots, most notably in a scene in which a knife is seen going through a person's hand and then is removed as Stone's camera zooms into the open wound. While it's hard not to agree that such a scene is gratuitous, it's also hard not to agree that an artist has a right to depict the world as he or she sees it (NBK was co­written by Quentin Tarantino, who wrote and directed the grisly Reservoir Dogs, which featured a ten-minute torture scene in which a man's ear is cut off with scissors).

The case of Clerks is even more disturbing because its NC-17 rating is reportedly based almost entirely on profanity. This is also the case with You So Crazy, a concert film which consists entirely of comedian Martin Lawrence's standup act. It seems unlikely that any amount of foul language could be as potentially harmful to those under 17 as the infamous ear scene in the R-rated Reservoir Dogs, a movie that made some not-usually-squeamish adults I know physically ill.

Simply put, the present system is flawed, the playing field is not level, and it reeks of the same kind of censorship that has resulted in book burnings, blacklists and labels like the Nazi­imposed Degenerate Art.

As long as major theater chains refuse to show films carrying the NC-17 rating, the rating-system remains a form of censorship that both studios and exhibitors should be encouraged to overcome.

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